One in four families are going hungry in SA and the state needs to massively beef up its helping efforts.
This is according to NPO FoodForward, which released the comprehensive “State of Household Food Insecurity in SA 2026″ report late last week.
Its MD, Andy du Plessis, says grants for children, the elderly and the socially distressed need to be doubled.
The crisis affects millions of South Africans has become sharply worse between 2019 and 2023, Du Plessis said citing the latest StatsSA household survey data.
The report comes ahead of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address on Thursday and finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s budget speech, scheduled for February 25.
Du Plessis said the SA Reserve Bank and StatsSA have acknowledged that food inflation is high in multiple categories, even as the broader CPI figure eased towards the 3% target.
“What the Bank and StatsSA data show is a corroboration that high food prices globally result in food insecurity locally.
“We find that trend is continuing. Food inflation is sitting at 4.6% now and worsening, and those numbers are not looking like they are coming down in the near term.”
Adding items to the list of zero-rated products will not help while a VAT hike would be detrimental to the poorest, most vulnerable households, he said.
He called on the government to consider doubling the child support grant, the old-age grant and the social relief of distress grant and said the national school nutrition programme should be expanded and better run.
“A zero-rated VAT goods expansion is a blunt instrument... We are sitting with historical inequality, high unemployment, especially youth unemployment, and severe poverty.
“We are operating in a low-growth environment, and economists say we will likely see 1.1% growth this year, and that is far from enough to create jobs.”
FoodForward’s core focus is to “recover edible surplus food” and use it to reduce food insecurity.
The NGO provides food to nearly 1-million people a day.
Its report cites Stats SA figures that in 2019 the number of food-insecure people was 14.25-million and severely food-insecure, 5.2-million. Four years later these numbers were 17.8-million and 8-million.
“In just four years, South Africa’s severe hunger rate jumped from 6.4% to 8.0% — that’s over 1-million more people going days without food,” the report says.
SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) CEO Themba Matlou said the agency was engaging the National Treasury in a bid to tighten controls to ensure that only eligible people received payments and to eliminate “leakage”.
Making the Bank’s repo rate announcement last week, governor Lesetja Kganyago conceded that while the December CPI print came in at 3.6%, food inflation was notably high.
He flagged the effect of a serious national outbreak of foot and mouth disease on meat prices, as well as electricity prices, made worse by the national regulator’s R76bn blunder that the public is expected to bear the brunt of.
Patrick Kelly, chief director for price statistics at StatsSA, said the average inflation rate for 2025 was 3.2%, the lowest since 2004 when it stood at 1.4%. That 1.4% level had last been recorded in 1969.
However, he acknowledged the pace of price acceleration in food categories, including meat and meat products, cereals, brown bread and pasta.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.